Advent: Love
Notes
Transcript
Advent: Love — “Because He First Loved Us”
Advent: Love — “Because He First Loved Us”
Gospel Community Church
Series: Advent
Title: Love — “Because He First Loved Us”
Speaker: Pastor Chris Polito
Throughout Advent, we have been walking a deliberate journey. We began with hope, not wishful thinking, but confident expectation rooted in God’s promises.
We moved to peace, not the absence of trouble, but the presence of God restoring what is broken.
Then we rejoiced in joy, not fleeting happiness, but deep gladness anchored in salvation.
And now, we arrive at the final topic, the culmination of it all: love.
But not the kind of love our culture sings about or the kind we experience when life is comfortable. Not sentiment. Not nostalgia. Not a feeling that comes and goes with our circumstances. Today, we are talking about love as God defines it—holy, sacrificial, initiating, and unchanging.
Because Advent love is not something we summon up from within ourselves. It’s not earned, and it is not sustained by our strength. Advent love is something we receive before we ever respond.
It is something that comes down to us before it ever flows out from us. And when this love truly meets us, when it is not just known in our minds but received in our hearts. It changes us. It reshapes how we see God, how we see ourselves, and how we see the people around us. This is the love that moved heaven toward earth, the love that took on flesh, and the love that still transforms lives today.
Join me as we open in prayer.
For today’s message I’ve broken it down into 3 main parts. With each part having a central truth to build on as we define love, see love in action, and explore being changed by that love.
PART ONE: DEFINING LOVE — GOD IS AGAPE LOVE
PART ONE: DEFINING LOVE — GOD IS AGAPE LOVE
Love is not defined by us. Love is defined by God—because God is love.
We see this truth in passages like...
8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him.
When Scripture says, “God is love,” it is saying something far deeper than the idea that love is merely something God does. It is declaring that love is who God is at His very core.
Love is not an action God occasionally chooses; it is His very nature. This is why God’s love does not fluctuate with our behavior or rise and fall with our faithfulness.
God does not wake up more loving on some days than others. He does not grow weary, impatient, or distant. His love flows from His unchanging character, not from our changing circumstances. This is the kind of love the Bible calls agape.
Agape love is not conditional. It does not wait to see if we deserve it.
It is not reactive, responding only after we get it right.
1. Agape Love Is Unconditional — It Gives Without Demanding Repayment
1. Agape Love Is Unconditional — It Gives Without Demanding Repayment
Biblical Example: Jesus Washing the Disciples’ Feet
3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
Jesus performs the lowest task in the room, not for strangers, but for men who will soon abandon Him. He doesn’t wash their feet to earn loyalty, praise, or gratitude. He knows Judas will betray Him. He knows Peter will deny Him. And still, He kneels.
This is agape love: giving without demanding anything in return.
No conditions. No leverage. Just love expressed through humble service.
2. Agape Love Is Sacrificial — It Willingly Absorbs Cost for the Good of Another
2. Agape Love Is Sacrificial — It Willingly Absorbs Cost for the Good of Another
Biblical Example: Christ on the Cross
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.
24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
Jesus does not love from a distance. He absorbs the full cost of our sin—physically, emotionally, spiritually. The cross is not merely an example of love; it is love paying a price.
Agape love does not avoid suffering—it enters it, so someone else can be healed, forgiven, and restored.
3. Agape Love Is Initiating — It Moves First, Long Before Love Is Returned
3. Agape Love Is Initiating — It Moves First, Long Before Love Is Returned
Biblical Example: God Seeking Adam After the Fall
9 But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?”
Adam and Eve do not run back to God. They hide. They cover themselves. They withdraw in shame. And yet God is the One who moves first. He calls out. He seeks. He initiates relationship before repentance is even spoken.
This is agape love: God pursuing sinners before sinners pursue God.
8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
4. Agape Love Is Unchanging — Steady, Faithful, and Secure Even When We Are Not
4. Agape Love Is Unchanging — Steady, Faithful, and Secure Even When We Are Not
Biblical Example: God’s Covenant Love for Israel
Israel repeatedly turns away from God—idolatry, rebellion, unfaithfulness. And yet God’s covenant love does not disappear. He disciplines, yes—but He never abandons.
This is agape love: faithful love that does not quit when the relationship is strained.
Look at the beauty of this promise from...
22 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; 23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
So before we ever loved Him. Before we repented. Before we changed. God loved us—not because we were lovely, but because He is love.
And this matters deeply, because the way we define love shapes the way we relate to God. If love were based on merit, many of us would live in constant fear—afraid that one failure, or one broken promise would finally exhaust God’s patience.
If love were based on emotion, many of us would live in insecurity—wondering if God’s love fades when we don’t feel Him near. But because love is grounded in God’s unchanging nature, we live in assurance. Our confidence is not built on our ability to clean ourselves up, but on the faithfulness of a God who loves first, loves fully, and loves us all the way into transformation.
For some of us, this truth isn’t theoretical—it’s personal. I think about my life caught in addiction. I was a person stuck in cycles I promised I’d never return to. A person full of shame, regret, and the quiet belief that “If God really knew me, He would walk away.”
But God doesn’t wait on the other side of our failures to love us. He doesn’t stand at the finish line and say, “Prove it.” He steps into the mess while the chains are still there.
He loves in the middle of the struggle, in the relapse, in the brokenness. Not because the person deserves it—but because He is love.
Now don’t get me wrong, that love doesn’t excuse sin; but it breaks its power. It doesn’t ignore the past; it redeems it.
God’s agape love doesn’t just meet us where we are—it walks with us until we are no longer who we used to be.
But here is the question Advent forces us to ask:
How does an invisible, eternal God make His love visible?(Ask the congregation)
The answer to that question is not a concept.
The answer is a child in a manger.
PART TWO: LOVE PUT INTO ACTION — GOD SENT HIS SON
PART TWO: LOVE PUT INTO ACTION — GOD SENT HIS SON
God’s love is not an abstract concept. God’s love was shown when He took on flesh.
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Advent reminds us that God did not shout His love from heaven or send it down as a message detached from our reality. He stepped into history. The eternal Son of God who existed before time, who spoke the universe into being willingly took on human flesh.
He embraced human weakness, knowing hunger and exhaustion. He accepted human limitation. He entered human suffering, stepping into a world marked by sin, sorrow, and death.
Jesus did not arrive as a king in a palace surrounded by comfort and power. He came as a baby laid in a feeding trough, born into obscurity, vulnerability, and need. So we have to ask why would God choose such a path? The answer is simple because love does not remain distant. Love moves toward.
Scripture tells us this was not accidental or symbolic it was intentional.
6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
The incarnation was an act of holy humility. And this path of humility did not stop at the manger. It continued through a life of obedience, rejection, and suffering.
8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.
From the manger to the cross, the message remains the same: love descends, love sacrifices, love saves.
One thing we must understand clearly is that the cross was not an interruption of God’s love. It was the culmination of it.
The wood of the manger points directly to the wood of the cross. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son”.
Advent love is not soft or sentimental; it’s costly. It’s love that gives what is most precious. It’s love that absorbs the debt we could never repay. It’s love that bridges the separation between a holy God and sinful people.
This is the love that reunites us with God, not because we earned it, but because Christ willingly paid the price in full.
And then, Scripture turns the spotlight on us.
Not to shame us.
But to transform us.
PART THREE: OUR RESPONSE — WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US
PART THREE: OUR RESPONSE — WE LOVE BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US
One of the beautiful truth’s that we get to experience is that God’s love does not stop at saving us; it continues by sanctifying us. So what that means for us is that the same agape love that justifies us before God also patiently reshapes us into the likeness of Christ.
Scripture tells us that Jesus loved the church not only to redeem her. Look at this example of how He loves church from...
25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, 26 that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word,
God’s love is active and purposeful, it confronts what is broken, heals what is wounded, and transforms what is sinful.
He doesn’t leave us as we were when He found us. Instead, through His Word and Spirit, His love steadily works in us, teaching us to hate sin, love righteousness, and grow in holiness.
Sanctification is not driven by fear or shame, but by the steady assurance that we are already loved, already accepted, and already secure in Christ and it is from that love that real, lasting change takes place.
One of the other beautiful things about this love is that His love received becomes love reflected.
11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
Christian love for our brothers and sisters is not a command we grit our teeth to obey or a moral standard we struggle to live up to in our own strength.
It’s a response to something that has already been done for us. We do not love others in order to earn God’s love, His approval, or His favor. We love because we are already loved fully, completely, and unconditionally in Christ.
Scripture makes this clear:
19 We love because he first loved us.
Our love for others is not the root of our salvation; it’s actually the fruit of it. When God’s love is truly received, it inevitably begins to reshape how we treat the people around us.
And the love that flows from the gospel is not selective or convenient. It does not stop with people who are easy to love or who can offer something in return.
God’s love reaches the difficult, the broken, the overlooked, and the undeserving, just as it reached us. Because if we’re being honest we’ve all been the difficult, the broken or the undeserving, right?
Jesus Himself said that loving those who love us back requires no transformation at all.
46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?
Gospel-shaped love moves toward people who test our patience, expose our pride, and remind us of our own need for grace.
When we remember who we were before Christ found us, it becomes impossible to withhold love from others. The same mercy that met us in our brokenness now sends us out to love with open hands and humble hearts.
Look at what I like to call Jesus’ Summary of the Christian Life.
37 And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. 38 This is the great and first commandment. 39 And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
This is one of the most sobering and freeing realizations of the Christian life: Vertical love toward God always becomes horizontal love toward people.
We cannot claim deep devotion to God while remaining indifferent toward those made in His image. Scripture refuses to separate the two. The love we profess for God is proven, revealed, and tested by the way it flows outward into our relationships.
As the apostle John writes,
20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.
This reality is not because God is harsh—but because genuine love for God reshapes the heart. When we are truly captivated by who God is and what He has done for us, love cannot remain contained; it must move outward.
And this truth confronts us in a personal way, because loving God is not measured only by our songs, prayers, or theology—it is revealed in our patience with difficult people, our compassion toward the hurting, our grace toward those who have failed, and our willingness to forgive as we have been forgiven.
So we came here today asking what is advent love?
Well, advent love is God refusing to leave us where sin had buried us. It is the holy God seeing our separation, our shame, and our inability to save ourselves, and choosing to move toward us anyway.
Advent love is not God overlooking sin; it is God stepping in to defeat it. It’s love that enters darkness, takes on flesh, and breathes the air of a broken world. It’s the Son of God lying in a manger, not because the world was ready for Him, but because it desperately needed Him.
Advent love is the slow, intentional march from the cradle to the cross. It’s love that grows, walks dusty roads, touches lepers, eats with sinners, and carries grief that was never His to carry.
It’s love that allows nails to pierce innocent hands and a crown of thorns to press into a holy brow.
It’s love that stays when walking away would have been easier.
Love that absorbs wrath so mercy could be poured out.
Advent love was never intended to end in a manger and advent love does not end at the cross either.
It rises from the grave. It reconciles us to God. It calls us sons and daughters instead of enemies.
It doesn’t meet us after we are cleaned up, but while we are still broken. It’s love that says, “You are forgiven.” Love that says, “You belong.” Love that says, “I am with you.”
This is the love we remember, the love we receive, and the love that changes us.
So in short Advent love is not something our feelings lead us into, it is something God has already proven.
And remember that today, we don’t stand before a distant God, but before a Savior who came near, loved fully, and gave Himself completely for us.
Amen? Amen!
Let’s Pray.
